Penis extenders or stretchers have been getting a lot of attention as the best male enhancement devices. As a result, device-free enlargement methods including jelqing, which is often proclaimed as the best male enhancement exercise, have taken a backseat. But while mechanical methods are gaining many followers, jelqing and other penis exercises are here to stay.

Jelqing has not always been viewed as the best male enhancement exercise, let alone a legitimate way to enlarge your penis. Some doctors claim that surgery is the best male enhancement method and the only way to permanently add inches to your penis. But contrary to what detractors of penis exercises say, there is science behind jelqing, which explains why it is one of the best male enhancement methods.

Several studies have taken a closer look at what actually happens to vascular tissue and the smooth muscle that makes up your penis when they are subjected to stress, which is what happens when you perform a jelqing routine.

Your body has the remarkable ability to adapt to certain stressors. Proponents of male enhancement exercises say that achieving growth is simply a matter of stressing the tissues and muscles of your penis the right way. You won’t experience any gains if you stress your penis the wrong way or worse, you increase your risk of injury and serious damage.

The article “Wall Tissue Remodeling Regulates Longitudinal Tension in Arteries,” which was published in Circulation Research describes how changes in blood pressure or blood circulation force the artery to modify itself to handle the stress. The arterial modification involved tissue elaboration, where endothelial cell replication rates increased by more than 50-fold, smooth muscle cell replication rates increased by more than 15-fold, and elastin and collagen went up.

Elastin is an elastic protein found in connective tissue that allows many tissues in your body to go back to their normal shape after contracting or stretching. Collagen is another protein that makes up the connective tissue within your penis. The findings are promising because they explain how your body can make modifications that will help it handle the stress that it experiences.

In another article published in PubMed, researchers examined tunical expansion. The tunica is the tough fascial sheath that contains the corpora cavernosa and corpus spongiosum, the two chambers of your penis that are filled with spongy erectile tissue. They found that “changes in the orientation of arterial smooth muscle cells during a constant longitudinal stretching of the artery in vivo are not similar in different sections of the stretching zone.”

While not conclusive, these studies support the efficacy of jelqing as one of the best male enhancement exercises available today. While further studies are needed to prove once and for all that the best male enhancement exercises can cause physical changes in smooth muscle and arterial structure that may lead to permanent enlargement, you have nothing to lose as jelqing is inexpensive and safe if performed correctly.